Fill-In Drummer Announced

A few friends have been asking us why we're jamming with a new drummer, so to dispel any rumors that Lewis is leaving the band - Lewis is simply enrolled in some college courses over the summer that makes it hard for him to tour, so we've asked our good friend Cody Beer to fill in for him on our upcoming BC/Alberta mini-tour.

Cody currently plays drums in the Vancouver band The Transition and has been a friend of ours since the days of his old band, Remember August.

Here's a couple pictures to get you familiar...





It's gonna be fun to share the stage with Cody for a few shows. Lewis will be back in action for our free show on July 31st at the Charles Dickens Pub in Sidney.

'Closer' Music Video

The brand new music video for the first single, 'Closer', from our debut album is now up on the web (YouTube | Vimeo). The entire video is stop-motion - compiled from still photographs taken on a digital slr camera.



Special thanks to the production team of Brian Dutkewich and Angela Kendall at Transmission2 for their hard work putting the video together for us on a shoestring budget!

The video will also be serviced to MuchMusic in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for that.

Warped Tour Contest

We've entered ourselves in an Ernie Ball competition to play at the Calgary Warped tour on August 15th and we need your help! Bands are going to be selected based in part on the number of votes they receive, so it would be awesome if you could help us out by voting!



You can vote for us once a day, and the more votes we get the better our chances are of playing the Warped Tour!

BC/Alberta Mini Tour Announced

In a little less than a month we hit the road again to do a couple shows with our good friends in the Vancouver band A Trophy Life. We'll also be joined for a couple shows by Alberta veteran pop-punk band Drive By Punch (RIP 1997-2007) who are reuniting for some summer dates.



Here's the details...

Tuesday, June 30
The Media Club
Vancouver, BC
w/ Sweetheart, The Grave Life

Thursday, July 2
Renfrew Community Center
Calgary, AB
*All-Ages*
w/ A Trophy Life

Friday, July 3
Venue TBA
Leduc, AB
*All-Ages*
w/ A Trophy Life, Drive By Punch

Saturday, July 4
Burnsy O' Flannigans
Leduc, AB
w/ A Trophy Life, Drive By Punch

Sunday, July 5
Hinton, AB
Perfect Game Bowling Alley
*All-Ages*
w/ A Trophy Life

We've got a much bigger tour in the works for later on this summer so keep watching our myspace/facebook/twitter/etc to find out when we'll be playing in your hometown!

Exclaim Likes Acres Of Lions

The latest issue of Exclaim! Magazine to hit the presses features a live concert review of Acres Of Lions 2009 Canadian Music Week showcase at the Rok Boutique in Toronto.

Here's an excerpt...

"Victoria's Acres Of Lions performance on the kick-off night to Canadian Music Week definitely set them up as a band to watch throughout the festival, if not throughout 2009....This is definitely a band to keep on the radar."

Read more of the article here.

Tyson helps Rockers win the Juno CUP!

For the first time since its inception, the Rockers defeated the ex-NHLers in the Juno CUP. The game, which took place last Friday at Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver, featured an assortment of Canadian music icons (Jim Cuddy - Blue Rodeo, Tyler Stewart - Barenaked Ladies, etc) taking on a crew of former NHL stars (Russ Courtnall, Lanny McDonald, etc).

After being one of the last musicians selected to perform in the Juno CUP, Tyson, with the help of line mates Cam Melnyk and Jesse Wainwright from State Of Shock managed to score once in regulation and a second time in the overtime shootout to keep the Rockers hopes of victory alive.

Check out some fan footage of the final minutes of the game...

Juno Fest / Juno Cup!

When live music hits the streets of Vancouver for JunoFest and rockers take on NHL greats at the Juno Cup, Victoria's Acres of Lions will be right in the middle of it all. The Juno Award events will follow the bands Canadian CD release tour in support of their debut album Working which was released on Cordova Bay Entertainment/Fontana North in February. The first single "Closer" has already been receiving adds, rotation and enthusiastic response at various rock radio and CBC stations.

Before they make their way back to the west coast, Acres of Lions will perform during Canadian Music Week in Toronto on March 12th 9pm at Rok Boutique. www.cmw.net JunoFest takes place on Friday, March 27 and Saturday, March 28 at various venues. Acres of Lions will play The Bourbon on March 28th - 10:30 pm. The 6th Annual Juno Cup game presented by The Keg Steakhouse & Bar takes place at the UBC Thunderbird Arena on Friday March 27, 2009.

JunoFest is a two-night music extravaganza that showcases the talents of over 100 local, regional and national artists representing the diverse spectrum of Canadian music. Nearly half of the participating line-up has been chosen locally to highlight Vancouver's rich and diverse music scene, in addition to performances from 2009 JUNO Award nominees and some of Canada's national touring acts. www.junofest.ca

This year NHL Greats such as Paul Coffey, Russ Courtnall, Brad Dalgarno,Mark Napier, Mike Pelyk, Bob Probert and Vancouver Canuck Cliff Ronning will lace up against the Rockers. The Rockers have gathered an enormous roster with artists such as Jim Cuddy (Blue Rodeo), Tyler Stewart (Barenaked Ladies), Kathleen Edwards, Sarah McLachlan and Cordova Bay artists Tyson Yerex (Acres of Lions) and Cameron Melnyk and Jesse Wainwright (State of Shock).

Juno Cup is an ever-growing popular event among fans that mixes music with sport, matching NHL alumni with top artists and entertainers in support of MusiCounts, Canada's music education charity, associated with CARAS. www.junocup.ca

'Working' is available now!

After a long wait our debut album is finally available in stores across Canada as well as worldwide on iTunes, EMusic, Amazon, etc.



The word on the street is that the album is available at HMV for $14.99, and on iTunes for $9.99 (without DRM). If you can't seem to find a copy in your local record store, they can order it in through our distributor Fontana North / Universal Music Canada.



We've also been fortunate to be listed in a bunch of sections of iTunes Canada this week: Fabulous New Indies, Rock > New and Noteworthy. Thanks iTunes!

Hitting All The Local Press

It looks like a little hard work playing local shows over the past few years is finally paying off with a ton of local coverage for our new album and cross Canada tour...



Times Colonist
http://www.timescolonist.com/Acres+Lions+ready+expand+territory/1256142/story.html

Victoria News
http://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/victorianews/entertainment/38868914.html

Monday Magazine
http://mondaymag.com/articles/entry/working-for-the-band/

Jeff and Dan also did an interview with Shaw Cable's - The Daily that will be airing all day Friday; and Jeff will be doing an acoustic performance and interview on the Zone 91.3 FM on Friday at 3:30 PM.

Working CD Release Party!

In just over a week our debut album hits the streets and that same day (Feb 10th) we leave on our first ever cross Canada tour! The tour will take us across five provinces for a total of 35 shows, and to kick it all off we're playing a CD Release Party at Lucky Bar in Victoria on Friday, February 6th.



We've got a couple great bands opening up: A Trophy Life, Conversation, and Beat Kids so it should be a really fun night!

Also note: the show is $12 at the door, but we're highly recommending that people buy advance tickets because the show will most likely sell out. Advance tickets are available from West 49 (in Mayfair Mall) for $10, as well as from Ditch Records (downtown) for $11 (including service fee).

For a complete list of our upcoming tour dates, visit us on myspace.

UVIC SUBurban Videos / Covers For A Cause

We've got a couple new videos up on our YouTube site from our performance at last weekend's UVIC SUBurban Party....







Also tonight you can catch us playing cover songs down at Lucky Bar as part of their semi-annual Covers For a Cause series.



Our set list will include songs by: Hot Water Music, Saves The Day, Attack In Black, Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World, Kings Of Leon, and The Hold Steady. Cover charge is only $5 and it goes to support cancer research.

New Myspace Look + Starting To Get Noticed

For those of you who follow the Canadian music scene closely, you'll undoubtedly be familiar with Chart Magazine's online editorial cleverly named ChartAttack.com. For a brief period today, the debut Acres Of Lions album and our cross Canada tour to support it were considered front page news. While that might be common place for many bands, it's a first for Acres Of Lions and as our album's February 10th release date grows nearer it's really starting to feel like the planets might truly be aligning in our favor!

In celebration, we finally took the time to update the look of our myspace page to fit in with web 2009. It's not quite as fancy as I plan on making it over the coming weeks, but I think it's a definite fashion upgrade from our previous version.



On a nerdy web design side note....I refuse to add a huge picture of us to the top of the page, as many other bands have done before us. I think it's just plain dumb when I arrive at someone's myspace only to realize I can access absolutely no relevant information about the band until I scroll a whole page down. I understand that maybe myspace isn't the most brilliantly programmed website of all time, but the one thing they did get right is that all the essential info about the band is available on the very first page and always in the same place. Their real mistake was making it so easy to hack the code to change the look/layout of the page.

Radio Play and Album Pre-Ordering

The first run of our new album, entitled 'Working', has just arrived at our label's head office here in Victoria so that means pre-ordering the CD is available now from the Cordova Bay Records website. The official release date for the album is February 10th, but pre-orders are all getting shipped out on February 1st, so you'll be the first one of your friends to get their hands on a copy!



Now that the CDs have arrived we've also started working the album hard to radio this week, and so far the response has been really positive! Rob Robson, programmer for the Galaxie 'Rock' Station, just added 'Closer' to Heavy rotation. New Vancouver rock station, The Peak 100.5 FM, also just added us to their playlist today, and we've seen features at both The Zone 91.3 FM in Victoria as well as Sonic 102.9 FM in Edmonton. College radio stations should be getting copies of the new album in the coming weeks, so hopefully we'll see some support there as well.

More to news to come...

New Acres Of Lions Single 'Closer'

'Closer', the first single from our new album, is out now on iTunes and other digital retailers!

It is also being given its first radio exposure tomorrow on Victoria rock radio station The Zone 91.3 FM as part of their "Modern Rock Inbox"! Start emailing and calling in your requests so we can convince them to add us to regular rotation!

Request line: 1-888-414-0913



Our friend and local artist Joey MacDonald did a wonderful job of turning us into fun cartoon characters for the cover of the digital single, and he did an amazing job on the full artwork for our album.

As far as the rest of Canada goes... a full cross Canada radio push for the single will be building up over the next couple weeks thanks to our friends at Frontside Promotions in Vancouver, and we're looking forwarded to helping get the word out when we hit the road across Canada in Feb/March.

We'll have more details about the tour soon, but in the meantime please take a second to stream the new single on our myspace page, and if you like what you hear, help us out by downloading the song from iTunes.